Kindle fire HD

You wait a year for an Amazon Kindle Fire (see our Kindle Fire review) to make its way to the UK, then two come along at once, with the greatly enhanced Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 arriving at the same time as its predecessor.

Now, with the late arrival on these shores of the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9, Amazon has three tablets to tempt us into its sprawling online ecosystem.

We'll say this from the off though: now that these two Amazon Kindle Fire HD tablets are here, the original Kindle Fire seems somewhat surplus to requirement.

Far more interesting, though, is the intense external rivalry presented by theGoogle Nexus 7 and the iPad mini, not to mention (in the case of the 8.9-inch model) the Google Nexus 10.

Starting from just £159 for a 7-inch HD display and a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 appears to offer great value for money. With a larger and sharper 8.9-inch display and a slightly faster 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, meanwhile, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 presents a decent value full tablet experience which starts at £229.

But the two Kindle HDs also need to offer stand-alone tablet experiences that are capable of matching - or even surpassing - their illustrious rivals.

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The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 certainly matches the Nexus 7 in terms of price and raw hardware, and it comfortably trumps the iPad mini on price and screen resolution.

The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9, meanwhile, trails the latest iPad in performance and screen resolution, but not in any meaningful way. And more importantly, it's considerably cheaper.

But, as we've come to realise, Apple's dominance in the tablet market has been built on strong design, coupled with a peerless content ecosystem and a super-slick UI.

The two Amazon Kindle Fire HDs may be cheap, but ultimately they will still need to embrace all three of these key elements if they're to succeed.

If you still think of Amazon Kindles as those little monochrome holiday companions, then you should know that the two Amazon Kindle Fire HD tablets are completely different beasts.

Rather than focusing on the very specific job of downloading and reading electronic books, these are all-purpose tablets that act as windows onto Amazon's wider multimedia world - films, music, apps and games are all included in the Kindle Fire HDs' remit.

With that in mind, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD range is a much simpler, purer design than the original Kindle.

The emphasis here is on the screen first and foremost, with the only hardware controls coming in the shape of some weedy and difficult-to-locate volume and power buttons on top of the devices, right alongside the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The lack of a fixed home key adds to that minimalistic vibe (we'll discuss the effect that has on usability later). The only detail on the front of the device is a 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls - there's no rear-mounted camera here.

Despite those impossibly cheap price points, neither Amazon Kindle Fire HD feels like a cheap device. They're both solid in the hand, with none of the creak you find in many budget Android tablets. The 8.9-inch model looks and feels exactly like a the 7-inch model - only bigger and heavier, obviously.

There's a nice contrast between each Amazon Kindle Fire HD's smooth, glass front and its grippy matte back. It's quietly pleasing from a tactile perspective, even though it lacks the sheer machined precision and premium feel of Apple's tablets.

While Apple has opted for a super-slim bezel for its iPad mini - partly to facilitate that wider 7.9-inch display (which falls right in the middle of the two Kindle Fire HDs) - Amazon has been more generous with its own offerings.

Indeed, the thick border around even the smaller 7-inch screen brings it closer to the full-sized iPad in design than its miniature brother.

We like this approach from a purely practical perspective (it actually makes it look a little chubby, if we're honest).

It's still comfier to hold the 7-inch model between your thumb and fingers than it is to rest it in the span of your hand, even when held in portrait view. Of course, that's partly because it's slightly chunky for its size - at 395g the 7-inch model is almost 90g heavier than the iPad mini.

The 567g 8.9-inch model, meanwhile, is obviously less wieldy, though at 80g lighter and a fair bit narrower than the iPad 4, it's relatively comfortable to hold in portrait view for a tablet of this size.

One area in which Amazon would hope to gain a big advantage with the Amazon Kindle Fire HD range over its rivals is with their displays. As we've mentioned, we're talking about a 7-incher and an 8.9-incher here, but it's the quality of these screens that's causing Amazon to boast.

The company claims that the displays feature a polarising filter and anti-glare technology, which apparently boosts colour and contrast, as well as improving viewing angles.

Despite such claims - not to mention early positive reports from the US - we have to admit to being slightly underwhelmed by our initial experience with the Amazon Kindle Fire HD displays.

They seem distinctly yellow to our eyes, although the 8.9-inch model doesn't seem to suffer quite so much as the 7-inch model in this regard.

Of course, it could just be that we've been conditioned by Apple's slightly cooler, bluer high-definition displays.

Indeed, once your eyes have grown accustomed to its warmer hue, you'll no doubt begin to appreciate the Amazon Kindle Fire HD displays' more naturalistic colour contrast - particularly when viewing video content. It's certainly richer than the somewhat washed-out and dim Nexus 7 screen.

That's only half the story with the Kindle Fire HD display, too. The clue is in the name. The 7-inch display is sharp, and with a resolution of 1280x800 and a pixel density of 216ppi, it's considerably sharper than the iPad mini.

The 8.9-inch model is even better to look at. With a resolution of 1920x800, its pixels are even more densely packed in to the tune of 254ppi. This makes the picture pop even more, and is quite comfortably the pick of the two.

Both tablets are pleasantly sharp, then. This isn't particularly apparent within the main Kindle Fire interface, but it certainly bears fruit when reading a book or browsing the internet, where small text remains clear and eminently readable.

These displays are powered by a capable 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460 CPU in the case of the 7-inch model, and a slightly superior 1.5GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4470 CPU for the 8.9-inch model. While these are far from the most powerful processors on the market, they are very well balanced, and they certainly don't come up short when faced with demanding tasks like high-definition video and 3D games.

One final piece of hardware-related info we really must cover is the Amazon Kindle Fire HD duo's impressive speakers. Positioned on either side of each device (if you're holding it in landscape), they're surprisingly punchy, given their size.

They really do crank out some respectable stereo sound - both in terms of volume and clarity, and it reminds us a lot of the power of BoomSound on the HTC One.

Naturally, we'd recommend using earphones whenever possible, but for those times where you're just following a quick email link to a YouTube video, they're more than adequate.